“We lost our ability to be picky because we were so completely broke”.

When I started doing my Pantry Anarchy recipes I know there were people who seemed quite dismayed that they weren’t “low cost real food” recipes. There are enough food bloggers out there giving advice on how low income people can eat healthy and what I personally hear is that the information isn’t helpful. It’s more helpful to have ideas on what to do with stale bread, canned peas, dehydrated potato flakes, and a tube of USDA issued ground beef. Because that’s what low income people are more likely to have access to. Ideally, I try to use the low quality ingredients I have to create food that’s creative, delicious, and nutritious but at the end of the day, #1 priority is that it’s edible and fills a space in our stomachs.

The way many of us low income people eat is not the way we would love to eat and on the flip side of that, many people who do not struggle with food insecurity are not conscientious about eating “healthy” and no one chastises them for purposefully choosing fast food and junk. People with food privilege should check their own while also looking at who they are choosing to aim their “concern” (shaming often) toward. Are you focused on the people who choose to eat poorly even though they have the means to eat well or the people who don’t have the means to eat any other way but poorly and have little choice in the matter?

Sure. Great fridge for a vegan with money and ability to do food preservation for anything that needs to be preserved before it becomes waste because dang, that’s a lot of fresh produce to use up. I guess what bothers me about images like this is that they declare that people should eat like this but are they saying, “EVEN POOR PEOPLE!” or ….are they just expecting everyone to make it happen for themselves? I never know .

I see so much of this and it’s important for everyone to hear and acknowledge. If you follow me on Twitter, I swear you’ll see me rant nearly daily about things tied into this. (My gratitude to my Twitizens who listen patiently )

The hashtag #AskJamieOliver on Twitter didn’t go so well for Jamie the other day. I think the tweet chat Q & A was supposed to be to promote his new show but it ended up being a chance for people to call him out on real food privilege . Well, that and to generally mock him.

I’ll just get this sordid confession out of the way right now: I kinda like Jamie Oliver.

I think he means well. I know,I know. Meaning well doesn’t count for much. I live in an area immersed with food snobs who are also bleeding heart liberals. They’ll dine together over local,organic meals while passionately discussing the plight of poor people. They think they get it but they don’t and they think that by just talking about all these poor people things, they’re being good people. Being good isn’t always the same as doing good…and “doing good” can sometimes end up being a poorly executed maneuver if you don’t have a full understanding of what you’re trying to fix.

This is the main problem with Jamie Oliver. He is in a perfect position to shed light on and change an oppressive food system but he needs to learn how to do so without shaming those who are struggling with real life problems. He needs a dose of reality and really needs to listen to his critics here.

There were some great snarky and pointed tweets the other day…

But my favorite tweets related to Jamie Oliver the other day was a series of tweets by @RhymesWithJen . She summed up what I talked about in The Reasons Poor People Don’t Eat Healthy a bit more succinctly (140 characters per point,you know) . I always feel like the points are worth reiterating . The people who have had negative critique of the points usually say I’m “making excuses for poor people”, instead of recognizing that it really is that way. For real. We’re not making this stuff up.

(Oh,language advisory here. I didn’t edit out the cursing. I know I was supposed to make this blog more PG Friendly but meh…I hate censoring)

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